Outside of Yonkers
by Netbug009
Summary: A collection of one shots. Warnings given by chapter. Rated T for safety.
1. Umbrella

So, yeah, I took up a big WALL-E fic challenge. My love for fandom takes up so much of my free time, and this movie is not helping at all. XD So, here's a big set of one shots. Expect pretty frequent updates and a lot of variety. If I do a fic for the challenge that's multi chaptered, or something that I fee should be set apart, I'll post it as a separate fic, but otherwise all the stuff for Mission Insane is gonna go into collective format for the sake of the poor site archive. I hope you enjoy the result of my madness and the talent God gave me. :)

And yes, I will warn for pairings each fic... Except WALLEVE. I'll just get that out of the way now. **EXPECT LOTS OF MUSHY WEVE GOODNESS **. Oh, and while we're giving warnings, SPOILERS. **IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, GET OUT OF HERE.**

Disclaimer: I do not own WALL-E. Pixar does. I'm not gonna own it next chapter of this thing either. Or the next one, or the next one, etc etc, I'm just a fan.

* * *

Outside of Yonkers  
By Netbug009

**Umbrella**

Dark clouds loomed over the landscape that the members of Operation: Recolonize had staked as their own. Like many other traits of the planet, knowledge of rain was programmed into EVE's brain, and she knew she had once been in a rain storm while in stasis, but none of that made EVE any more used to that which she was feeling for the first time.

It took EVE about five minutes to figure out why humans mostly headed for cover when storms came. At the very least, they made one feel uncomfortable. She didn't have the same issue with getting wet that her organic comrades had, but rather there was a special issue _only_ she had. The crevice that her head stood above acted as a bowl, and the water that dripped from her head all fell into it and started to build up. It felt so awkward that she's have to shake the water out rather frequently. The storm's complete covering over their patch of the sky only pointed to this annoying routine continuing for the entire, long trek home.

But then he came.

She simply watched the Waste Allocator curiously as she continued hovering towards their home. He pulled out an old (but without holes, and she wondered how much work it was to find that) umbrella and rolled along beside her, holding it over her head. It was small. Rain still was hammering down on him. EVE wondered if he even noticed, since his expression looked so content. And he would be content. He always was when he could be near her. It didn't matter what he had to go through for it, and seeing that trait in him yet again softened EVE's expression greatly. He would let himself be completely drenched just so she wouldn't feel a little discomfort.

But he didn't have to do that.

As she hovered sideways towards him, she brought out her fingers. She put both hands on the umbrella handle, intertwining one with the one WALL-E was holding it with. Now they were both under it, and their pace almost immediately slowed. They looked over at one another, into the other's eyes, and only looked away on rare occasion to check the road ahead of them (or, at least, EVE checked anyway.) WALL-E put his other hand on EVE's other hand, and the huddled together happily as they kept moving.

EVE turned away from the warmth for a moment and looked up at the sky. It was still the same dark colors. Still the same gloomy clouds that only promised more of the storm, and yet now it all seemed so beautiful. It wasn't the first time she'd felt that way. She turned back to WALL-E and put a spark on the side of his head. He sighed. She liked that.

They finally got home. It was too soon.


	2. Tires

**Tires**

Shyness was his strong suit.

So there he stood, watching her, with a large pile of tires between them. Those tires were an incredibly sharp double edged sword. He was safe here, but she was on the other side. Honestly, he wasn't even sure he wanted to be safe anymore. Putting aside the a occasions of getting caught in a dust storm, his current life was the safe one, and the more he watched her the more that life felt boring. But he wasn't sure enough of that feeling to go up to her, because he didn't completely understand it.

Was it not logical to try and preserve one's self? Shouldn't he stay safe as long and as often as possible? What would approaching her gain him? If WALL-E was anywhere close to a normal robot, he would have been asking himself those questions, or more likely following them _without_ question, but WALL-E was not normal at all. Still, something held him back. Something made him afraid. She was just so... If he said the wrong thing... _Hello Dolly!_ had not explained this emotion.

So logic was pushing him not to go up, emotion was pushing him not to go up, and yet he still couldn't leave. Why? The only thing pushing him to go up to her was Hal, who he refused to listen to with a frantic shaking of his head. But the roach didn't listen, and started crawling up towards her. WALL-E sunk deeper behind the tire.

And she fired.

He rose up, shocked. For a few seconds, and for the only time that would ever be recorded, he felt a tear about this emotion inside of him that kept him from leaving.

But, much to WALL-E's relief, Hal was just fine. His pet came out of the crater and... she put the gun away. WALL-E became less tense as the tip of her arm transformed into four delicate, pretty looking fingers. She actually let Hal crawl up her arm, and seemed fascinated by him. Then the tear was sewn back together by her laugh, and it was a strong stitch. She didn't have to laugh. She didn't have to let him come up onto her, but she did. WALL-E didn't quite understand, but he knew there was something special about that, and he started laughing too.

Oops.

He ran frantically from the blasts of the ion canon, but still the tug-of-war in his heart concerning going or staying wasn't resolved. He'd run and run, but he refused to leave the area. He couldn't leave her. He didn't want to leave her. She was trying to kill him and he just wanted to be there and watch. So he kept hiding behind new piles of tires until they exploded, but soon there were no more piles to hide behind.

He could have run. He could have zig-zagged and possibly avoided being hit. He could have gotten as far away from there as possible and never have seen her again.

But he didn't want to.

So he cubed up.

He couldn't go up to her. Something inside him was afraid of that. He couldn't go away. Everything inside him was afraid of that. Not even his faithful pet was able to solve the tug-of-war for him.

But she could, and she did, flying up to him and demanding he come out. He took the command almost immediately, and glanced up at her. A glance turned into a stare. She was so close to him. She looked so brave, strong, all the things he wished he had been when he was watching her from behind the tires. He took his pet back and simply kept staring at her, for the few words he knew wouldn't come out of his mouth. He wasn't able to put his mind together before she had left him there.

He simply sighed.


	3. New Generation

So, a friend of mine mentioned they'd be interested in seeing some WALLEVE hurt/comfort, and I have to write some of it for the challenge anyway, so I figured I'd make it a bit of a priority. I don't usually write this genre a lot, and this is one hard fandom to write it for ("What do you mean I gotta hurt WALL-E?! With EVE there?! You could set the guy on fire and he'd burn happily if EVE was there to watch! AHHH! (pulls hair out)"), so please forgive me if it's not all that great in comparison to some of my other work. -- Critique is welcome. Maybe it'd help me write a better h/c next time. Thank you. :)

* * *

**New Generation**

"Wow, look at the old garbage bot!"

"What, is he trying to help or something?"

"No way dude. They have bigger ones for that now. He'd have to be an idiot."

"Wouldn't shock me. It's just a robot after all. They don't think by themselves or feel or any of that stuff, remember."

WALL-E did not like kids. At all. Since his only experience with them was the above conversation, could you really blame him?

Of course, they didn't know any better. This many generations down the road, his story had become less of an "everybody knows" thing and more of a "get out your textbooks" thing. That didn't make having a huge group of kids calling you a loser as if you couldn't hear any nicer though. They didn't even think he cared, which hurt the most. He cared. He cared about a lot of things. Why shouldn't he have?

The garbage bot always came home the same way, quickly. Tired from his job, he'd rush home to spend some time with her. She was EVE, and she knew him like the back of her hand, so it took all of a second to notice something was wrong when her love came home practically dragging his treads.

"WALL-E?" she asked, flying up to him with a concerned look in her eyes.

He immediately pulled her close.

Robots don't cry. They are not built to cry. There is no need for them to cry. And yet, EVE felt like one was crying on her right now. She picked him up and returned the hold, closing her eyes and stroking the back of his head a little bit while she hummed softly to calm him down and possibly ever cheer him up. In a strange way, she was also trying to cheer herself up with the embrace. The two of them might as well have been one person. If he was sad, chances were so was she. Simple as that.

* * *

"Iiiiiiideeee... Ideooo"

"Idiot?"

"Uh huh!"

"All?"

"No. Unnnfe... Feeeelllliii."

"Unfeeling."

"Uh huh."

EVE scoffed at what WALL-E was telling her. She had half a mind to pull out her ion canon and find whoever had insulted him so much, but WALL-E had passed on a lot of his love for life to her, and she knew that they didn't know any better. He had already told her they were young. Back when the Captain was alive, he had explained to both of them how humans had to learn as they went along, rather than being programmed. He continued to rant to her. She nodded and helped him with a word when he needed it.

But, even if they had known, maybe the ion canon wasn't what WALL-E needed her to do right now. What they were doing... just sitting and talking about it... she watched him tell her the story of his day, and strangely he seemed to be happier now despite talking about unhappy things. Maybe all of life's problems weren't solved with an ion canon. Maybe all of life's problems weren't solved at all. Maybe relationships were sometimes as simple as just being there for him.

And being there for him was something she was happy to do anytime he needed it.


	4. Crying

**Crying**

He was gone.

That one statement took control of her mind when the pod exploded. He was gone. He was gone.

It was her fault.

He was gone. He was gone. She pulled back the first statement, suddenly finding it appealing. At least, it was more appealing than putting blame upon herself for it.

He was gone. He was gone. It was all her fault. Yank. He was gone.

But no matter how much EVE tried to pretend the second statement wasn't inside of her, it was. Trying to believe something isn't there didn't make it any less real, and it was all her fault. It really was. She was the reason they had been anywhere near the life pods, she was the reason the plant was there, and somehow she was the reason he had went in to get it. Why he felt the need to do these things for her was something she didn't understand, or did she? Did she understand it better than she wanted to admit? Was there a part of her that understood completely? Not the point. The point was he had went into the life pod for her, and that made it her fault.

So she cried. Tears rolled from her eyes in what her programming knew was a way to convey sadness and something else understood in a deeper sense than a fact. She broke down and cried to express how she felt.

At least, that was the dream of the moment.

But she couldn't even do that.

What was she? She didn't feel like a robot, and she knew she wasn't a human. What was she supposed to be? Why was she blessed with the ability to feel pain in the first place? But contemplating God's will felt incredibly silly when everything that you'd ever cared for in this world just exploded.

The five stages of grief are merely an outline. When one is going through them, there is always that main stage, but they will also feel hints of others. Despite all the feelings going through EVE's mind right now, she was still in the stage of denial, and therefore she flew towards the inferno despite everything.

But she never saw the other stages.

Because he was back.


	5. Wrong

**Wrong**

Robots and art did not mix, unless perhaps you were creating art about a robot, but the other way around? Creating a robot to do art? It simply wasn't done. Even BuynLarge knew this, so they never created an art bot. Instead, they kept painting bots in the area of repairing scuffed walls.

At least, that was what they tried to do.

It all started with the wrong color. Blue, which didn't match the white wall he was supposed to repair. It did not match. It was an error. And yet... it looked so right against that wall. It was appealing. The VN-GO unit that painted it on there found it appealing anyway. But this was even more wrong than the color he had painted. It was an opinion. He was not supposed to have an opinion. That was so very wrong of him.

"Wrong," said the steward, cementing that fact, and the robot scrambled to paint over it in the right, white color. Being do dull versus the bright hue he had used by mistake, this took a few coats, but he did it and went on with his job.

But normality for something so wrong can only go so far. After his job, on his way back to his kiosk, he remembered the white wall and it's moment of color. He looked around at the other white walls that seemed to cover the entire ship, and couldn't help but wonder what they would look like with color on them. Te more he thought about seeing color in his world, the more it made him happy. Happy was an emotion. He was not supposed to have emotions. Emotions were wrong.

The entire next day was wrong. Grumbling about the blank walls was wrong. Imagining the different colors he could put on them was wrong. Painting stripes of color everywhere he went was wrong. Going of his line was wrong. So incredibly wrong. Leaving your line was crazy wrong. He heard "wrong" from the stewards so many times that day, and had so many warnings, until he found himself in a freeze way with that dreaded word thrown at him one last time before he entered the repair ward.

But then the left him there, and there were no stewards. There were no bots telling him it was wrong any more. The only bots around were just as wrong as he was.

So he painted. He pained his entire cell, flinging every color it had on all the walls and the floor. When it was done, he painted over it. Painting that one little square of ground made him happier than his directive ever had. He was born to paint, an not the way the world wanted him to, but in a greater way than that. But still, he wished he had more space to paint than a little square.

Then one day he heard the sound of an ion cannon hitting the front wall.


	6. Angel

**Angel**

"WALL-E?!"

As she held his crunched body close to her, the world around her was spinning. At least, it was as close to a world as the Axiom could be. It was the only world she had known for more than a few days. None of it mattered now. She barely even noticed it jerking around like mad as they tore through space. She just saw him in her arms.

What was he thinking?! So what if the holo-detector closed?! So what?! Why did he do it?! What was it to him if they never got back to Earth if he was dead?! What was it to him if she had a directive?! What was it to him if she was happy or sad or even existed?! What could he have possibly gained from all of this?!

He had followed her around like a puppy dog, no matter what got in his way. She never had figured out how on Axiom... no, how on _Earth_. She liked his world so much more than hers. She'd never figured out how on Earth he'd followed her back to the Axiom in the first place, much less why.

Well, not completely true. She now knew why he followed her here. He loved her. The real question was why he loved her so much. As she screamed to him, the images from the security camera cycled through her mind. He'd taken such good care of her, and kept her so safe, like she was some kind of angel. It didn't matter how white her decor was or that she could fly or that her arms were a lot like wings; she felt nothing like an angel. If she were an angel, she'd be able to fix all of this in a heartbeat with the mighty healing powers God had given her. But she was just EVE, closer to Noah's dove than any sort of angel, but she didn't feel like a dove either.

He wasn't responding to her call. She couldn't take it. "WALL-E!" she screamed at her top volume. Still no answer. She kept calling while she held him close, as if that alone would keep him with her.

Everybody on the Lido Deck started towards the exit, and EVE finally snapped back into reality. They were on Earth. She had a directive to complete.

"**Move!**"


	7. Define Weather

**Define Weather**

72 degrees and sunny. It was always that way on the Axiom. 72 degrees and sunny. That was supposed to be the perfect weather. It was supposed to make the world that was the Axiom the perfect place to live. For most people, this plan was an incredible success

Captain McCrea looked out the window of his bridge into that world, and for the first time realized how boring it was.

"Rain," his computer had told him. "Also known as precipitation. A weather pattern during which droplets of water fall from clouds in the sky that they were formerly evaporated into." The definition was accompanied by several pictures, including a few with humans in them. Most of those humans seemed displeased by the rain, and he couldn't figure out why. The computer told him rain wasn't usually toxic when he asked if it was. What was the problem?

It got him looking at more types of weather. Snow, wind, hail, humid, the list went on and on. The more he learned about Earth, the more alien it felt to him, and yet the more fascinating it sounded. As he looked out that window, he imagined the Lido Deck experiencing different kinds of weather. He imagined their faces upon seeing something so peculiar. But McCrea, being the logical fellow he was, having never really imagined much before, and not knowing of any weather modification system aboard the Axiom, moved the setting of his imagination to a place where the odd conditions made sense. The only option was Earth.

The imagination is a great source of dreams. He looked over at his shelves, at the globe and model of the Axiom there, and it got him dreaming more.

So he went over and picked them up.


	8. Disposal

**Disposal**

Garbage towered above her on all sides, threatening to bury her even more and allowing little light to slip through to her optics. She was so small compared to all of it, and now that her feelings were getting a grip on her, she realized how lonely and desolate it all was.

At that moment, EVE saw exactly what WALL-E's life was like.

Wait... WALL-E!

"WALL-E!"

The room began to rumble. She tried again, more loudly this time.

"WALL-E!"

Then she was picked up in the garbage and the irony. But she kept calling out to him, though she wasn't entirely sure why. Was she expecting him to save her? He didn't look ready to play hero last time she was him. Did she want to save him? Well, of course she _wanted_ to, but could she? Or maybe, she just wanted to hear his voice in all of this. Maybe, she just wanted to not be alone, and for him to be alive even for one more moment.

Maybe, she just wanted to know she was near him.

It turned out she was only a cube away.

She saw him there, so close and yet what felt like forever away in her current state. He said her name, or the name he called her anyway. That was fine. She was really starting to like that name more anyway for some reason. Maybe it was the voice behind it. That voice was calling to her, and she saw the owner of the voice that huge cube over from her. Now that she heard it, a part of her wished it hadn't. It was still his voice, which made something inside of her dance like an idiot, but it was so weak. So incredibly weak, especially in comparison with the cheerful and optimistic voice he usually had when he said that name. The light in his voice being gone grabbed another part of her and stole the light from its very heart.

Yet, he was still calling it. The words behind the voice hadn't changed a bit. Despite his condition, he was still calling out to her and reaching her way. Both parts of her, the dancing and the dark, refused to let that voice down.

In what would be considered a clear sign of a defective (not to mention insane) model to any diagnostic robot, she caught herself in her own explosion, blasting away all the debris around her and immediately zooming over to him. He didn't look any better close up, and she worried about pulling him out. He looked so fragile, like he'd snap in half if she put even the smallest amount of pressure on him. She tried to work around him, removing the garbage holding him as she stroked him comfortingly. This actually seemed to be working.

Then the doors behind her shut, and she had to hold onto him for her life.

She prayed internally, and wouldn't let go. She refused to let go. If she let go of him, he'd take her heart with him and she'd follow.

She wouldn't let go.

Her prayers were answered by a small, cleaner bot keeping the door from closing.

She wouldn't let go.

She grabbed onto him with her free hand.

She wouldn't let go.

Soon, she and WALL-E fell to the floor, and the doors started opening back to relative safety.

She wouldn't let go. Not now, not ever.


	9. EVE's Special Trait

...Please forgive me for his.

**EVE's Special Trait**

EVE was, to say the least, incredibly confused.

It was not even a week since they arrived on Earth, and already a large number of robots were somehow finding the time to follow EVE around constantly. It was a big piece of deja vu for obvious reasons, but it didn't seem like the same reason WALL-E had followed her. Even so, it annoyed WALL-E to no end, if only because it annoyed EVE. There was also, of course, the little issue that he couldn't get a single moment alone with EVE outside the truck. In the morning, they were in front of the home waiting, and would follow EVE till the end of the day.

This went on for days on end. At first, EVE would turn back and while a little, thinking that maybe they'd go away. Eventually, when it was clear this wasn't working, she just started ignoring them. It was all she could do, seeing how she was trying to control her bad habit of pulling her cannon at everything.

Then it got to a week straight.

"What?!" EVE finally turned and asked. More deja vu. She screamed so loud that WALL-E himself cubed up a little. The following robots all gave her a confused look, as if they didn't know what was weird. Seriously? "You! Following! Why?!"

The question seemed to click, and the bots beeped amongst themselves, trying to figure out how to respond. EVE crossed her arms, glaring impatiently. The group pushed a small robot up, apparently the representative.

"EVE... Shiny."

There was a long silence throughout every robot in the squabble.

"...Serious?" EVE asked, dumbfounded.

All the following robots nodded.

She just stared at them for a moment, then her eyes returned to their annoyed look and she pointed her ion cannon at them. "Leave," she commanded.

Would she actually shoot? They didn't know. EVE wasn't sure she knew at this point. She knew better, but that didn't mean she wasn't tempted. The little group didn't want to sty and find out. They all scattered. WALL-E started to uncube more when EVE put the cannon away.

"Home," she said, still annoyed, grabbing WALL-E's hand and practically dragging him back to the truck.


	10. Tracks

**Tracks**

For the first time, she noticed them.

Tracks in the dirt, going every which way that was possible for her little garbage bot.

She wondered how many were his. How long had he been so alone? How many of the tracks of his brothers had been completely eroded away? Were his the only ones left? Could all these track marks be from the WALL-E she knew, roaming by himself? Wasn't he ever tired of it? Didn't he ever complain? How could he keep those tracks so fresh, despite everything?

Or maybe that was what she loved about him.


	11. Compassion

**Compassion**

The day that EVE asked about WALL-E's 700 years alone, she realized he'd been waiting for that question to come up a while. Within moments, he was giving her a prepared abridged version of his story the best he could with his dialect. But by a few minutes in, she wondered why he'd ever wanted to tell her. Was it that important to him that she knew?

After all, and he sat next to her on a bench, he was throwing his heart on the ground in front of her. It was as if he was just now realizing how much it had hurt. She nodded and listened, nodded and listened, a compassionate look on her face as she held his hand.

Compassion.

It felt so fake right now.

Compassion was partly the act of feeling somebody's pain. To feel somebody's pain, you must have at least an imagined idea of what the pain was like. But this, the story WALL-E told her with one of the most serious looks she'd seen in a while from him, went beyond her imagination.

700 years.

_700 years._

When he first started getting a sad look on his face, those two words hit her like a ton of bricks. But she just continued to listen, in a slight daze.

It didn't take long for her to look ten times more devastated than he was by the story, and he noticed.

"...Evah?"

"WALL-E!"

She grabbed him, holding him tightly against her, eyes closed sadly as a spark passed between them.

"Evah?" he asked again.

Her reply was different this time, and quite simple.

"Stay."

She had to try. She had to try and understand. She had to try and be compassionate for him. But to stand the pain, she was going to need him there. After all, he was the stronger of the two.


	12. Space

**Idea by gojira007**

* * *

**Space**

Space.

That was the first word that came into EVE's mind, hitting her even before her directive's commands could. Space, and tons of it, awaited within her reach on this forlorn planet known as Earth.

The development center, the room where a Buy n Large robot first receives it's programming, is quite different from the repair ward. Instead of having a jail cell likeness looming over it, the room is completely surrounded by windows. The inner windows looked into a tunnel of the Axiom, as if to scream "look at the great new robots we're working on for _you_!" There were also the windows that looked out of the ship, into what would be complete darkness if not for the stars and the glow resonating from the massive star-liner. That was all EVE had known, being the first of a new set of EVE probes produced after humanity had long been away from Earth. EVE remembered receiving her programming in that room. There were so many times when EVE was being programmed, feeling bored out of her mind (though she didn't understand that emotion, and simply thought it was a side effect of the programming work), that she'd look out one of those windows into the stars thoughtfully. It made her curious (though she didn't understand curious either) to learn a little more about it. For outside of that little cramped world floating through the stars, there was what seemed like an infinitely vast new (better?) world. It was complete and utter nothingness, yet so appealing, putting a strange tingling sensation into her arms that doubled as her wings at the thought of being out in that world. Soon enough, she learned the word for it; space. Of course, when she downloaded this vocabulary file from the resource center, it came with a list of meanings, not limited to the one she related the word to. Space also meant any area that had nothing in it.

This dirty world in front of her now was space, and yet it wasn't, and yet it was. The paradox spun her mind for a moment before logic kicked in. Even when she got over that, something felt wrong. This world and all its space just felt so utterly wasted, with nothing but junk for miles and miles. Beautiful junk, because there was so much space around it, but still junk. Nothing else was here as far as she knew. The setting of her reconnaissance hit something inside of her hard. For once, she understood the emotion. It was ambition. Her directive was practically taunting her with this land that was she was supposed to help start the recolonizing of.

Space.

The ship closed back up.

Space.

It launched back into space, to return in a week or so. She watched it go.

Space.

She looked at that word, still standing in front of her directive, and she realized she'd never get to the later unless she dealt with space first. Besides, it wasn't like anybody could see her, and it'd only be a moment.

So she spun up into the air and flew. She went up and down and in circles every which way she could without losing sight of the place the ship had left her and therefore wanted her to start her search from. No big deal.

At least, she thought it was no big deal.

Space.

That word was going to change her life.


	13. Attempting a Hobby

Hey US! 29 days till the WALL-E DVD/Bluray! Let the countdown begin! (Or if you're not in the US, enjoy the mess of fanfics anyway, and hang in there! :))

* * *

**Attempting a Hobby**

WALL-E absolutely hated pencils.

Well, no, he didn't hate them. They seemed to help EVE sometimes, after all. Not to mention the humans found them quite useful. It was when he had to pick one up that it drove him crazy. The little wooden stick didn't fit well in his hands, and it took him forever to get it at an angle he could use. But, sadly, even if he was still along on Earth and therefore wouldn't have the issue with ruining somebody's property (he also wouldn't have EVE, and he liked the humans, so he wasn't complaining) he couldn't write with his laser this time. There was simply too much he was writing this time.

What WALL-E was attempting to write was something he had heard some of the humans talking about the other day. They used a lot of words he didn't understand and hadn't heard any other humans use before. He did, however, get enough to hear of something that sounded fun _and_ had to do with his favorite movie of all time. What had th humans called this again?

...Oh, right. "Fan fiction."

He finally got the pencil right and began writing. From a grammatical standpoint, EVE would later be figuring out the best way to let him down lightly without all out lying to him. His sentences were completely fragmented and missing importing connecting words, though for somebody who only spoke in one word at a time and wasn't built with a supercomputer in him it could have been a lot word. _Cornelius + Irene. Walking. Hands. _...Now what? He didn't know what to write next. What did that mean? Those humans he had heard taking sounded like their stories had been much longer than his was. Did he do it wrong? He thought hard, trying to figure out where to go next with it. _Park. Flowers. Pretty._ That sounded nice, but... It was still so short sounding... _Walking. More. Still hands. _Hmm...

"Hmm..." WALL-E stroked a nonexistent beard (nonexistent chin, for that matter) and rolled away from the swinging rack in the truck he was using for a desk. He rolled back and forth for a bit. The movie in his story was on the television for a mix of background noise and inspiration. After a moment, he held a finger up in the air. "Aha!" He quickly rolled back over to his "desk" and started writing like mad, as if the words were flowing out of his pencil too fast for him to control. "Uhhuh... uhhuh...oooh..."

The pencil fell out of his hands mid thought. He panicked, and quickly began to attempt grasping it again. Somehow, WALL-E had found something harder for him to do within the confines of his own house than hanging onto the spaceship as it launched.

30 minutes later, when he finally got the pencil positioned like it had been before, he eagerly put it to the paper once again.

Nothing happened.

WALL-E had completely lost his train of thought. He simply sulked, discouraged. It was at this point he quit. Not one to easily give up, he could have kept going if he wanted to, but he didn't feel he was having enough fun that it was worth the effort he was putting in. Fan fiction just wasn't for him.

Or...maybe it wasn't him, and those humans were just weird.

...Nah.


	14. Perspectives

**Perspective**

EVE just stared and stared at the WALL-E graveyard.

Hundreds, no, thousands of WALL-E's brother models were spread across the landscape in various positions and phases of working. She had to look away. They all just looked so much like him, and images of almost losing her WALL-E flashed before her eyes because of it. There was one that was crushed. There was one that looked like it's chip had fried. She wished she could rewind and never find this place to begin with. It was as if pain was attacking her eyes with every pixel her camera brought to her audio recognition systems. She couldn't destroy any of it either. Not only would it feel like sooting at him again, something she still regretted from the times she was so ignorant, but WALL-E somehow bore this pain frequently to keep going. At least, until new parts could start being manufactured for him again anyway. The Axiom's captain had promised he was working on that for the little hero.

_Frequently_. Her own word hit her. How could he stand this pain more than once? If it was this painful for her, what must the pain be for the being who had to watch them die and leave him there? He had been so incredibly deprived of what a human life should have, which his was a mirror of. Didn't it hurt? Wasn't he bitter? Both were stupid questions. An easy yes and no. But why were they yes and no? Why did he keep going with this pain like nothing was wrong? He'd always smile at her unless she was in danger. He'd always dance and sing and be the joy of her life when she had nothing else, which is what it felt like for a bit when her directive had fallen apart into the most beautiful yet confusing shards one could find. But how could he? How could he give up even more for her, after all of this?

But...maybe he didn't look at it that way. When he made sacrifices for her, he seemed so happy about it, and while she didn't quite understand it, she felt the same when she gave something up to him. They were both there, both alive, even after all the chaos that had almost torn the apart.

That thought made it possible for her, despite being on the grounds of a great tragedy, to smile.

But it still hurt, and she still wanted to leave.

So she did.

But she'd be okay when she got home, because he wasn't one of them.


	15. A113

**A113**

There was a part of her that didn't want to face him.

It was Auto's life-song, a simple 4 letters. Too simple, just like Auto. Simply dangerous, also like Auto. It was the reason she had watched him fall down the trash chute, eyes wide and unable to save him or even move until her repair ward controls were pressed and she fell into two kinds of darkness.

It was the only thing keeping her away from him now that she had realized what he had been trying to say. She still didn't understand it completely, but she wanted it with everything in her all the same.

Despite all this, it was also the reason she didn't want to face him. It was the reason she wanted to run and hide, crying to herself about her own-life song. It was so much longer, and so much more complicated. For this, she envied Auto.

Because they were the same, but his song took up less hard drive space. Auto had attacked him for the sake of the directive. So had she, back on Earth. Auto had put his soulless orders before the feelings of those around him. So had she, to him, with orders from the same confused human. It didn't matter that her and Auto were for opposite causes. No cause is good if you do it by being a hateful to the world and only for the sake of being right.

She was A113.

But even as she thought about all of this, she was calling out his name. She was still so selfish, wanting him to continue to chase her. Calling for him to come and once again stare at her with his strange eyes, so different and beyond hers, that made her song something that wasn't a complete mess for about ten seconds before the guilt set in again. And she just kept calling and calling as she was lifted by the giant robots that were just like him but nothing like him at all into a cube right next to him.

He was hurt. She remembered now. That memory was enough to push away all the guilt and self-pity and send her into a mix of panic and determination that she couldn't comprehend as she almost blew herself up to get out of her position and go help him. It was time to stop being A113.

It was time to give him something back.


	16. Better Dreams

**Better Dreams**

There he was, beyond the blue lights that projected him in the air. He was concerned for her. He protected her from the rain. He made sure she was safe.

He loved her.

She finally understood him, and it was terrifying. A similar situation to being woken up from a long sleep and realizing everything you thought your life was never really happened. Only it felt like waking up from a nightmare, which only scared her more. To think that something as chaotic and confusing as this was what she wanted more than her former, comfortable, organized life scared her because it meant she had no idea who or what she was anymore. Was she still a robot, somehow being able to understand such a human concept? Was she human, but simply made of metal and not skin?

But no matter how much she thought about all the chaotic situations she was surely getting herself into, she couldn't pull her fingers apart. She couldn't stop staring at the video. And quickly, but it felt so slow and overdue in her mind, one word started taking over all her doubts and confusion and fear. She sighed that name affectionately, and pushed the grogginess away like a bad aroma. Somehow, thought she didn't know who she was, he did. Somehow, that was enough to bring one fact about herself into the light immediately.

She loved him too.


	17. Boxes

**Boxes**

WALL-E was the world's slowest packer. He would stop on almost every item he packed and messed with it for a little before sadly putting it into a box, as if parting with a good friend for a while. Though EVE couldn't help have compassion for WALL-E whenever he wasn't happy, a small part of her was rolling her eyes internally at what she felt was overreacting a little. After all, this had been his idea.

In fact, WALL-E had insisted. With humans starting to build real homes that were a good double the size of the truck even for one human, WALL-E couldn't help but feel self-conscious. No matter what EVE said, he had thoroughly convinced himself that he was not providing well for EVE by having them both cramped up in the truck. EVE could easily tell when it was one of those few times that the trash compactor's choice was beyond even her persuasive reach, so she went along with it. WALL-E was more attached to the truck than she was anyway. She didn't feel the need for a new home, but it didn't bother her.

EVE finished packing the few things she had, a grand total of one box, and flew over to WALL-E, helping him pack. She felt a little bad for it, noticing the worry in WALL-E's eyes over if she would pack things properly (EVE wasn't sure she'd ever understand WALL-E's collection system) though he wouldn't dare say anything. It flattered her how much he'd put her needs first, though she sometimes wished he'd be a bit less tense. Some days she couldn't help wonder if he ever felt afraid of her, like she was going to leave him if he ever complained.

"Sorry," EVE said, backing away from the box in an attempt to show that this was not the case. She wasn't really sure if this had helped, however, because he simply switched to a different worry. A stronger worry. The "EVE is upset" worry was about a billion times worse than the "collection is disorganized" worry, and she immediately regretted her tactic when WALL-E went into a sort of emergency situation mode.

That's what she got for being so incredibly hypocritical. She wasn't good at simply coming out and saying things to him either. It was in no small part owed to the fact that she had no practice at this, since he was the world's greatest EVE mind reader. For example, he was now pushing the box towards her. A confused expression overcame her.

"Okay," he said, with one of those completely genuine eyes-only smiles that made her defenses fall off like old snake skin. "Help."

She paused, looking at the box as if it was going to eat her in the best way. When WALL-E trusted you with his collection, it always meant something. The more and more time they spent together the more and more steps he'd take in this area, reaching towards the collection being an equal possession to both of them. EVE's eyes went into happy slits and she went back over to the box, carefully putting items into it.

As predicted, things got packed a lot more quickly. Half was because EVE was just a faster bot than WALL-E, and the other half was that WALL-E got so busy staring at EVE that he stopped focusing on playing with his knick knacks and packed more quickly himself at the times when he didn't pause to simply stare. EVE noticed out of the corner of her eye, and couldn't help but giggle at how smitten WALL-E was by her doing something as mundane as packing boxes. This simply made the bot sigh and sink deeper on his tracks.

The farther they got into the packing process, the more positives EVE thought of about going to a new home. They'd be farther into town, closer to where the humans and other robots they had become such good friends with lived. It would be larger, which meant more of those friends could come in at once.

Plus, their current home had a huge hole in the roof.

Oops.


	18. Brontophobia

**Brontophobia**

The EVE probe was a sophisticated piece of reconnaissance technology; sleek, yet built to withstand any kind of weather.

But that didn't mean she had _seen_ any kind of weather. In fact, humans hadn't seen natural water, and therefore clouds, since many years before she'd been manufactured. Due to this, a great error was overlooked when the probe was being designed.

EVE was a floating lightning rod.

"Evah!" On the first dark, cloudy day in a while, WALL-E pushed EVE out of the way of a bolt, getting shocked himself.

"WALL-E!"

Of course, he was fine, having been hit by the same natural disaster multiple times before, which he told EVE. But despite this, she still carried him back to the truck and once there began looking over him in a frenzy. As she checked him over, she asked him questions about how he felt. "Okay," he replied several times. Finally, he took EVE's hand pithily. She froze. "Evah."

"...Okay?" she asked, loosening slightly. The question was quite rhetoric sounding.

"Okay," he replied anyway.

EVE calmed down the rest of the way with a sigh, and squeezed WALL-E's hand back. Their fingers with intertwined moments later, but a quick glare passed EVE's features. "Worried," she scolded.

"Sorry," WALL-E replied with warm eyes, much to EVE's dismay. He wasn't sorry for the part of it she wanted him to be sorry for. She gave up. WALL-E's overly self-sacrificial attitude was something she loved about him anyway.

Older lights blinked from static discharge as thunder boomed directly overhead. EVE's hand squeezed tighter, but she couldn't help melting slightly when the gesture was returned and WALL-E leaned his head against her. How odd, she thought. Normally, love seemed to make her feel more emotion. But with WALL-E here, and safe, EVE found herself unable to have fear.


	19. Centerpiece

**Centerpiece**

She is the only one who spends more than minutes in the park during the snowy winter, and legend is she has done that as long as anybody can remember. Sometimes she skips days, but never will more than a week go by without her floating to the heights of the giant tree in the center of the foliage.

She runs her white fingers gently across the naked branches, a deep look of love and nostalgia across her face that nobody of the current generation can understand. It's a silent cry that only he could understand if the town could even remember his name.

It was, and always will be their tree, changing with the seasons just as he changed her. But change is also why he is never with her on those winter days. For a moment, a whimper echoes through the empty pathways for that double edged sword, but there is also a feeling of happy remembrance in the probe bot. Happy. She has a program to show that. One she was never supposed to get, but she has it all the same. It is when her eyes are pushed up slightly into sideways crescents.

She never comes through the exit gate without that program.


	20. Malfunction

**Malfunction**

WALL-E was the strangest robot Hal had ever met. He was certain, even before WALL-E wasn't the last other being on Earth, that he would never meet a robot weirder than WALL-E. The bot was malfunctioning to the max on a constant basis, stopping his job to look at every little thing that looked interesting. Then he would bring them to his makeshift home and watch the strangest movie while sorting it in a way that somehow made sense to him.

But that was not the strangest thing about WALL-E. Not by far.

The strangest thing was that he actually _dreamed_.

The robot would mumble as he slept (which he didn't need to do anyway) and sometimes move slightly. A lot of nights, Hal would momentarily be waken by the sound of revving motors, and would find WALL-E in a variety of positions. Sometimes, he'd roll over onto the top of his cubed form, and panic in the morning when he thought his head was stuck in his body. Sometimes, he move forward off of his bed slightly, and end up rolling too far forward the next day, hitting the other shelf and causing something to land on his head. Sometimes, and this had gotten more common of late, he'd simply clasp his hands together and sigh in his sleep.

Of course, dreams also made room for nightmares, as Hal soon learned. One night, WALL-E shook constantly, warbling sadly in his sleep. Eventually, the cockroach realized what was wrong, and would go over to WALL-E, sleeping on his solar panels in the best attempt at comforting the bot he could muster.

After all, he liked WALL-E strange. His strangeness was why he had taken Hal in to begin with.


	21. Priorities

**Priorities**

For the entire day, M-O had been following WALL-E around for the good of the Axiom. Foreign contaminants were taught to him as being dangerous to the passengers. It made his job important, and he liked his job. A lot.

And he'd finally caught up to the filthy bot, but instead of pulling out all the stops that 100% contamination deserved, he found himself defying his program to be as fast as possible and using his softest brush. Without even realizing it, his priorities had taken a slight tun.

What was that word? It wasn't used anymore, but it still seemed to apply perfectly...Oh! Right! "Friend"!

_Friend. n. A person one knows, likes, and trusts._

Huh. He'd never had one of those before. How cool was this?

(Definition courtesy of Webster.)


	22. As Time Passes

**As Time Passes**

Auto had almost crushed him. Auto had almost stopped EVE from something she cared about. Auto had tried to hurt the Captain who was trying to help EVE. But even knowing all of these things, WALL-E couldn't help but be a bit sad when he learned Auto had been deactivated. He'd been told not to awaken Auto under any circumstances, and he complied, though he would still sometimes enter the old Captain's room when exploring the now library of a star liner.

Had Auto always been the robot he had met? He wondered from the moment A113 was explained to him. Was there a time when he was nice? When he had been as nice as the Captain? As time passed, did his directive get stronger, and therefore he get worse?

WALL-E, more than anybody else in the colony, appreciated relationships. He'd been fully awake for all his time doing the same thing over and over. He'd known what it was like to have so little around him to interact with. And while he loved his pet Hal, it wasn't the same as a fellow robot.

He couldn't help but sigh at the deactivated wheel. What if they had met in a different time or place? What if the circumstances had been different between them?

Maybe, they could have even been friends?


	23. Contact

**Contact**

EVE was a very impatient robot, and she was assigned to search an entire planet. Only about a week into her search, this clash of programmings (or what she thought was two programmings anyway) had proven a good source for large explosions.

Still, she couldn't help but have some self-esteem on the issue. After all, she'd held the anger in until there was something that wasn't moving to take it out on. She could have, instead, shot as the forlorn bot who had been following her around for days. Why hadn't she, anyway? It acted like a spy in every way, and was possibly planning something of bad intention against her. And yet...

...She asked it its directive.

Why on Ax- wait, no,why on...Earth, wasn't it? Why on wherever-she-was did she start a polite conversation with this robot? He'd not shown the same programming to her in all the time he'd had. The one time they'd had an exchange he's simply stared at her. Wait, why did she care?

For some reason, the little robot fascinated her. He seemed to want information about her, yet never followed any codes to get it, even though it wasn't a very hard thing to do. It wasn't, right? "Directive?" That was it. Simple. But he didn't seem to do things that way. Also, he was so incredibly glitched in a way she'd never seen a virus attack any bot before, and how would he get malware alone down here to begin with?

It was strange, but EVE found herself wanting, on a level that was beyond her directive's programming, to understand this robot. Or, at the least, spend some time communicating with him.

Suddenly, EVE realized that she hadn't ever used her communication programming before, and for some reason it felt so incredibly wrong as he looked up at her. So, she tried to keep the conversation going despite cutting off his question. She asked his name, and he replied slowly, as if that was hard too. Okay, she decided, she'd take a break and let him talk to her for a bit. She's answer any questions of his that were not classified.

But still, what a strange little robot this "WALL-E" was.


	24. Fool

**Fool**

It was the world's most foolish situation, EVE realized, to say no to what she had been searching for so long. To toss away something that had frustrated her so much when she did not have it.

But it didn't matter.

Despite the images flashing before her showing her another option, there was no other option. She knew now that she needed a hand someday, and understood to the deepest part of her core that any other hand would reach out and rip her apart.

So she went against everything she'd thought was right, and began towards what truly was right. The two had next to nothing in common, and she found herself making mistakes every step of the way.

Again, it didn't matter.

In the end, she'd done one thing right, and that made up for every error and flaw she had ever executed. For she'd shook her head no and offered him her hand.


	25. The Walk Home

**The Walk Home**

Thousands of humans and robots crowded the streets of the city on just another day. It was just after the school day had ended, and a group of students sat at a table outside a coffee shop talking about the report they had to do. It was on the first colony to return to Earth after evacuating from space, and it had been founded at the exact location their metropolis now stood upon.

How much the world had changed in these thousands of years! WALL-E once again pondered his life as he rolled along the sidewalk, looking up at humans reading off electronic notepads and listening to music on MP3 players. His walk home was more nostalgic than most, for he could see in his mind where certain pods had been placed. The Captain's home had been where the coffee shop with the young humans talking was now. It seemed fitting, for some reason.

But at the same time, so little had changed. His walk still had the same goal as it had been for generations, and that goal was getting home to her. When he thought about seeing her again, the setting of his walk or even what kind of home his walk lead to seemed completely irrelevant.


	26. Transformation

**Transformation**

She wished that she could say she had always been exactly like she was now. She wished she could say that she'd always been a robot who smiled constantly, and laughed at every chance. She wished she could say she'd always had a spring in her step and had always shared that positive attitude with those around her.

Unfortunately, that wasn't true in the least. Until recently she'd been anything but that, angry and confused about her life.

This version of EVE the other humans and bots all knew her as was something she had only recently become, and WALL-E was completely to blame for every bit of it.

She wouldn't have it any other way.


	27. Imagine

This one's totally inspired by "There She Is! Step 5" Yes, that's a total plug. I recommend all WALL-E fans go to the Sambakza website and see the series ASAP. It's awesome, and it has some similarities to WALL-E that I think are gonna make fans out of a lot of the folks reading this if they haven't already. :D

* * *

**Imagine**

The world didn't change to beautiful overnight, as many of the humans had hoped it would. The next morning, the sky was still a dust brown; the ground was still covered in shrapnel, cardboard, and paper; and the dull, terrible smell that came with all the garbage continued to make spoiled eyes water. It was the exact opposite of what an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator wanted to see around themselves.

But there one was, eyes in happy slits, fingers intertwined with another robot, who stared at those eyes with a stare that defied all logic in a robot's system. To that one, the world around them was simply a backdrop, and it didn't matter if it was sludge or gold, nor that many were confused by the logic of those moments the two shared. The fact that those moments were there, and that they were together in that backdrop, made all the objections and negatives vanish in a heartbeat.

Her name was EVE, AKA Probe 1. She was in love with WALL-E, and that was enough to make her world the best that had or would ever exist.


	28. Off

**Off**

His cooling system worked overtime as he struggled against his captain. His wheel pushed right against his will. His shock prod hit higher voltages than should be used on a human.

And suddenly, he was off.

Still, inside his casing,he was running. Auto found himself completely lost in a sea of black. A113? Gone. Links to Axiom information? Gone. His latest orders? Gone. So, what was left? He asked, which was beyond what he should have been able to do. But he had to ask. He didn't have the answer, not a solution, and this was simply unacceptable. He didn't understand that this wasn't protocol. That this was a part of himself that was overpowered when all his programs were activated and his eye lit up in a melancholy red. Thought he didn't understand this, he hated it somehow. He wanted it to go away. He wanted something else that made sense. He wanted to be fully off like he should have been, or fully on like he used to be.

But even though he didn't realize it, he needed this time to think.


	29. Quiet

Wow, did we just jump over 100 reviews here? Thank you guys! :D While it was a coincidence, admittedly, I'm glad this one came out long, and I'm really happy with it, since I owe you guys for all the time you take to read and comment on my work. Enjoy! :)

* * *

**Quiet**

The first thing EVE noticed when she stepped outside was not her internal mechanisms working harder to keep her warm, nor was it the ground being covered with a strange powder the same shade as her casing, but rather EVE noticed how incredibly quiet it was. Though after hundreds of years of the mindless noise of the Axiom there was something enduring about the sound of thousands upon thousands of humans working, there was also something incredible about this.

Abruptly, she turned her attention to the white powder when a sphere of it hit the back of her head. Her ion cannon came out and she pointed in the direction the projective came from. She was met by a human shaking and holding his arms up. A second was closer to her and had a terrified look on his face. "Sorry! It was an accident! I was aiming for him!" The man pointed at his friend, shaking. EVE put the gun away, confused. Her fingers moved to the spot of impact and wiped the powder off, but kept a little in her hands and examined it with both her optics and her scanner. Apparently, this substance was made of tiny crystals of ice. How interesting.

"This time I'm gonna get you!"

"Oh whatever! You can't hit the side of an escape pod!"

"Wanna bet?"

EVE internally groaned at the breaking of silence, and hovered away in search of another quiet place to examine this strange weather. Thankfully, it seemed like the ice was everywhere, so this wasn't an incredibly hard task. She was soon reentering what had become a paradise of insulating snow for her.

"Evah?"

This time, it was a noise she didn't mind in the least. "WALL-E," she said, taking his hand and pointing at the snow. She wanted to share this with him. "Quiet," she commented. "Peaceful."

There was no speaking for a moment.

EVE realized she was getting no reply, something that still frightened her and inspired more paranoia such a action would in any other bot. "WALL-E?"

"Sorry...Quiet...Nice..."

WALL-E's tone made EVE to a double take. She'd never heard him react like that, so unenthusiastically, to anything. Was he really that uninterested in something so new to him? She didn't get it. She tried to relate, but to her such silence was a rare treat that she hadn't had since she had probed Earth in what felt like a lifetime ago now.

Wait.

It was quiet when she was probing Earth.

Earth had always been quiet, hadn't it? Quieter than it was now, in fact. To EVE is was strange, but he had lived with that for the entirety of his long existence. And he's tried to escape it, hasn't he? To escape with the music that he constantly played. If WALL-E had looked to EVE at that moment, not being busy attempting to look interested in the snow, he may have caught a look of incredible sympathy on her face as she thought.

However, WALL-E did notice when EVE's hand left his. He looked around trying to find her, and couldn't. But, at the same time, any time he turned to look, he could swear that he heard her fly somewhere else, and also for a moment the moving of snow.

Before he could figure out what was going on, a sphere of snow hit him in the back, and he heard a familiar giggle.


	30. Piece

Soon, EVE was flying, only a ghost of the self she had shown the ship as it was leaving. Yet she knew the moment she landed, it would return and haunt her in that way she never questioned and barely noticed. Still, deep down was that little part of her that made her stop to soar through what no other would see as beautiful sky. A little part that mystified its self every time it showed its face. The only thing EVE knew what if she lost it, it'd be missed. Like an essential part of her programming that only caused her delays. An essential bug.

Truly, her estimate of the piece's worth was incredibly modest, because that was what he'd fallen in love with.


	31. Wishing

**Wishing**

She wished things were different, especially her. She could have wished the most that people had told her to do different things, but it had been her own body not fighting back that had helped bring WALL-E to the sorry state he was in now. Never once had she told those orders and that programming that it couldn't have her, and by the time she realized what she'd been doing she'd gone too far. He'd been pulled completely into her world trying to make that discovery simpler for her.

A familiar object came from his trash chamber, and she blinked. Once again, he'd saved it despite his own danger, but this time she could hug him and spin him around in fear that he'd break farther. She could only stare at the little plant, how little it she finally noticed it was, as it was dropped into her hands. Dozens of processes came on and blocked all but his pained expression, telling her what to do again. Telling her what was supposed to be the most important thing. She wished she was different. She wished these orders didn't control her.

DELIVER TO AXIOM SUPERIOR.

Silence.

She tossed the little plant aside, done with that wish.

"Directive."


	32. Free to a Good Home

**Free to a Good Home**

It was the strangest thing McCrea had ever seen. In fact, he wasn't completely sure it was happening until he realized the authenticity of the frosty weather hitting him when he opened the door to his pod home. His second guess was that he had identified the visitor wrong, but none of the others who looked like this one would come so informally.

There was EVE, one of the strongest willed bots he knew, looking up at him with eyes big and sad like a little kid, carrying one of the smaller animal clones that had been let loose about a month ago. This one was... a cat, right? A young one. A kitten? Yes, that was the term he was looking for.

"...Uh...are you al-"

She held it up to him. He only now noticed how much the creature was shivering. There were multiple other ways that it didn't look to be in the best shape either.

"Help?" EVE asked desperately.

McCrea blinked in surprise, and several questions came to mind. Maybe they'd let the creatures out too young? What if there were other kittens sick in the colony? Without him even realizing it, EVE's empathy for the creature had passed onto him. Something didn't make sense, however. "Why are you coming to me? Most of the Axiom's information has been opened to the public for a long time. I can't give you any information to help that it can't, can I? I mean, not saying you can't come to me, but..."

"Uh..." EVE's expression changed to hold a pinch of guilt. "...Care?" EVE asked meekly, holding the creature up a little higher.

Oh. "Why me? Can't you?"

EVE shook her head. "Cockroach."

Ohhhh. He looked at the kitten, then at his friend, then back.

No, wait... maybe both were his friend.

He smiled, gently taking the kitten from EVE, which prompted EVE to smile as well. "Appreciated!" EVE said ecstatically.

"No problem," McCrea replied. He noticed the kitten kinda waving at EVE and chuckled. "But you have to come visit it sometimes, okay? I think it likes you."

EVE nodded one last time before heading out. She hated to be short, but she'd been trying to figure out what to do with the kitten for a while and was now late getting home. WALL-E was probably worried sick.

"Come on," McCrea said, closing the pod door. "Let's get you a blanket and something to eat, huh? Maybe we can ask for some help checking on your siblings, too." McCrea lightly patted the kitten's head. Somehow, holding it had a calming effect. Maybe this would be good for both of them.


	33. Gap

**Gap**

For a fraction of a moment, it was simply novelty. Beautiful novelty, but novelty all the same. Just like the world around him was already, cold and thoughtless, except this was moving and clean. Of course, he was too captivated to notice, but there was indeed something missing.

Until she flew.

There was no logic to that action, so it immediately left the world he'd known and called to him from another that was the same and yet light years away. Before he'd been able to find the gap in the equation, it was filled by the irrational, and he ogled at the now complete being zooming over him.

The moment ended, and he was in love.


	34. Lunch

**Lunch**

"Okay, who set up the cooking schedule?" a human of the colony asked his friend quietly. While the entirety of the Axiom didn't eat together, there were small groups of about thirty humans each that ate meals together for the sake of conserving time and firewood.

"No clue. Why?"

"Cause somebody needs to talk to them if they thought it was good to have McCrea cook. Ever." No offense was intended to the captain, of course, seeing how the vast majority of former passengers had a great deal of respect for him, but...

"Lunch is ready!" the familiar voice of their captain yelled from by the pot of stew over the fire. "Enjoy! I tried something new with the peppers, prune juice, and nutmeg!"

"Don't worry," another member of the group interjected stealthily. "I already arranged with some other groups to donate leftovers. The ones the chef bots help run."

Of course, the plan had one fatal flaw, and that was the incredible power of leftovers.


	35. Nothingness

**Nothingness**

Nothingness.

That was all the Axiom's external sensors had detected in 700 years. Nothingness. Auto knew better. He knew that space wasn't truly nothing. It was just sparse. Still, such a fact programmed into him from manufacturing did not change what he picked up.

But suddenly nothingness felt like something as he could only sit and ponder his failed directive, locked deeply inside his manually running controls for another day that nobody wanted. But he could still see from behind the proverbial glass of a thousand firewalls. He just couldn't do anything to it. He was without directive for the first time, and it made him as great a nothingness as those sensors.

But then, the sensors felt something...wind. Air. Tiny fragments of atmosphere that had escaped worlds became magnified by the hyper jump. Then they hit Earth, and the sensors only went all the more crazy. Something. Suddenly, there was something.

It was different, which under normal circumstances would have had the autopilot going mad in fury, but now his directives were gone. A113 a failure. Protect passengers until the return to Earth, a success. The two only pulled at him more and there was something new added.

Uncertainty.

Auto almost fell into uncertainty. He almost began to think about that he how had nothing, and how he was as the humans had been, and how he had done such a terrible thing to them. All from a different feeling. All from something. He almost thought on his own.

How illogical. How glitched. How useless.

He turned off with the rest of the Axiom, dormant until somebody flicked the power switch again.


	36. Afterthought

**Afterthought**

For a moment, it was an afterthought. An important afterthought, but an afterthought all the same. So far back in her mind, truthfully, that it was momentarily forgotten, an extra ounce of power being used by her stasis chamber the only remaining fragment.

She didn't understand it, if she even realized it, but the plant didn't matter right now. It was safe, and that was enough, much to the dismay of the beeping that moaned ever so quietly inside of her. She looped and zoomed in and out of the course to the Axiom superior that her CPU was scrambling to work out and update as her starting position rapidly changed over and over again.

No, it could wait. Right then, she wanted nothing more than to match illogical movements. To believe she was among stars that were clearly light years away. To share her first dance with him.


	37. Sky

(Why yes, this was totally inspired by Kingdom Hearts. xD)

**Sky**

Her plan to send him out of her life had failed.

Yes, WALL-E had gone home in the escape pod. It was a perfect launch, and she'd gotten out of the area undetected. Not knowing she'd been trespassing and finding her to be more stable than the cameras had shown her as before, the repair ward reran her diagnostics and let her go. Still, her plan to get him away had failed. As EVE searched the Axiom for her missing plant that night, she passed through an observation deck. Much to her dismay, the bot she was supposed to forget made a rude interruption, catapulting to the front of her mind.

Was... Was he looking out to the sky too?

It was the same sky, wasn't it? No matter how far away she sent him, that truth of the same sky would remain. No matter where he was, he _was_. Somewhere. Somewhere reachable. The more she saw those stars, the farther away he was. The more alone she was. Loneliness was still beyond EVE's comprehension, along with many other feelings the sky brought, but she did understand regret.

Despite how much time she spent shut down after her superiors forced her to give up her search of the Axiom, the following year dragged. Every inspection, even piece of training, and every briefing; they all felt at least ten times longer than the last time she'd done them. Until the final briefing came, where she was once again shut down, and woke to hovering below a brown, forlorn sky. It was a new drop-off point, as always, with new buildings and new ways to zoom around when the delivery ship had left her alone. But, of course, none of this was truly important. EVE had a mission to attend to, and she had no time to waste.

After all, it was a long flight back to his truck from here.


	38. Color

**Color**

Brown was the only color WALL-E usually saw, which was fine, because it was the only color around him even according to a normal set of eyes. The bleak landscape's blow was softened by being all he knew, and all he was programmed to know. Even his favorite movie, which seems to hint at more colors existing in the universe, had a slightly brown tint to it the whole way though. Even after he began to notice the potential of his life and the world around him, he never really thought about this.

That was, until it came.

At first, the lifeless white pod was the same as everything else, though even with the brown tint it was clear that this...whatever it was had a more sanitary demeanor to it than anything he had seen, something that made it almost feel unnatural to him.

Then it, no, _she_ activated.

Her eyes glowed blue. Pure blue. No brown. The energy that created the color made it show differently to his optics, and it was the first time he had experienced such a thing.

She flew, and he stared in awe at how beautiful she was. Suddenly, the blue alone seemed so simple, as if her twirls were showing him a new array of colors that even his manufacturers had never seen before.

She gave him hope of a life in Technicolor.


	39. Joy

**Joy**

But now there was joy, which quickly destroyed the remains of any hopelessness she had felt only moments ago while watching his empty frame roll around. The tender look in his eyes once again held his heart, and therefore hers was back as well.

This went beyond anything she had ever imagined possible, or according to many of the humans around her, what should have been possible. But she knew she felt these human emotions; she felt happiness when she flew, she felt grief when there was danger to those she cared about, and she felt love. Most importantly, she felt love.

What she felt was minor, however, compared to the results of the strange actions her emotions stirred. She held him close, pressing her head against his, letting the ill logic of the situation fall off of her in the very way it would have trapped her earlier that same day. These emotions had brought him back to her, and that meant more than any explanation.


	40. Debate

**Debate**

"So, the EVE probes were made to protect WALL-E units, right?"

"Nope."

"No? But EVE was clearly showing concern when WALL-E was damaged, right?"

"Yep."

"...Er, okay... So, the WALL-E units were made to help us go home, right?"

"No. They were made to compact trash and have nothing to do with the Axiom."

"...Then what happened back there?"

"Simple. EVE loves WALL-E and was worried about him."

There were a few variations on how this conversation took place, but it almost always ended with blinking. Despite everything, they still thought it was strange. Human skepticism had few bounds, apparently. And few things made one more skeptic than the idea of supposedly inanimate objects falling in love.

McCrea had to admit that he found the reactions from the passengers when they got the whole story kinda amusing, which is why he didn't tire of having to explain the story the passengers hadn't been there for to who knows how many curious people. It would have been more if John and Mary hadn't been helping, understanding it much better than the others did for some reason or another.

"They're robots."

"Yes."

"Robots."

"...Yes."

"Robots don't fall in love."

"These two did."

This conversation was taking longer than the normally did, and was finding himself in a sort of a stare down with the former passenger he was currently talking to as he watered some plants.

"...Sorry, but no. I really don't get how that works."

At this point, McCrea had reached the end of the script he'd built up from other conversations. He paused to think on a reply. "To be honest," he smiled, "I don't get it either." The stare down abruptly ended, the passenger tilting his head slightly. McCrea didn't let him get a reply in this time. "I don't think anybody here knows the mechanics, pun not intended, behind those two. But we're here, aren't we? Maybe not everything is for us to get right now."

The passenger opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, then looked at McCrea with a mix of confusion and respect before walking off.


	41. Extraction

**Thanks so much to Shadow Wolf and BabyCharmander for beta reading this fic! Blame them for the not-fail!. xD**

**Extraction**

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye... unless you're WALL-E. In that case, you can just replace it.

Usually.

WALL-E's working eye winced as he looked at the empty shelf. How could he forget to keep his normal part surplus? Okay, bad question, suddenly having EVE (oh, and all the humans) around gave him a plethora of possible distractions.

"WALL-E?" He flinched when EVE came up to him, seeing the damage and lack of replacement. "Ooh." She thought for a moment, then offered her assistance.

Never in a million years (all of which he dreamed of spending with EVE) did WALL-E think he'd want to refuse an offer from EVE to do something together. And yet, now he wondered if this was a good idea. She didn't know where he got the parts, after all. Wait, had he really never told her before? He hadn't shared something about himself with EVE?! Inwardly, he felt as if he'd created some major gap in their relationship. But all the same, what if it hurt her to know? He looked at her optics, imagining them with a depressed look. He'd already seen them that way once and never wanted to again.

Currently, however, he couldn't roll in a straight line, much less go get replacement parts on his own. There was always asking the humans for spare parts but, between how busy they were and their inexperience with his model, that could take a while. Was there really another option to get parts immediately?

No, there wasn't.

Darnit.

* * *

Sans the mechanical babies made for home economics classes, it is physically impossible for a robot to vomit, as it would be quite superfluous for them. Then again, the same could be said for having emotions. EVE felt like she could throw up at any moment, or at the least hug WALL-E and not let go for a good year minimum (something that a robot _could _do.) She hid all of this quite well though, for his sake. _This_ was how he'd gotten new parts all those years?! Not that it didn't make sense, but it'd never crossed her mind as a possibility. She could have seen miles and miles of half-salvaged WALL-E units if she'd dared to look up again from taking the eye off this one. WALL-E stood behind her, clanking his shovels together awkwardly and a tad guilt ridden. As predicted, EVE was hurt. He could tell by how slowly she moved. A moment later, EVE turned to WALL-E with the salvaged eye. "Thanks," he said, going to take it.

EVE pulled it away. "No," she said, oddly sternly, then pointed to herself. "Help."

WALL-E didn't dare argue as EVE carefully removed his damaged eye and connected the new one, only removing her hands long enough to not interfere with his vision resetting. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up down. Up down. She placed her hands back on his optics gently, moving some of her fingers to make it seem like she was checking something when she was really just staring at him. WALL-E could tell. "Evah..." he said worriedly.

"Alright," EVE replied, letting go. She really was alright compared to how it must have been for him. He seemed pretty numbed to it be now, but what about the first time? The first _times?_

WALL-E, with his vision back in order, didn't need to be carried home. He also didn't need to be held protectively close during the flight. EVE did both of these things anyway.


	42. Sunday

HEY GUYS! GUESS WHAT THE 27TH OF JUNE WAS. (hands WALL-E birthday cake)

Anyways, to celebrate the awesome of WALL-E's anniversary, the WALL-E Fanfic community on LJ has been doing a little prompt a thon. The prompt is a song from the soundtrack each day. So yeah, if the titles on a buncha these look familiar and you sense a pattern, it's not just you. Of course, other WALL-E fics may pop up and interrupt from time to time. You'll probably recognize the soundtrack related ones by the titles tho. I'm feeling title lazy right now. XD

Anyways, enjoy. :)

-------------

**Sunday**

He never had learned where Yonkers was, but he had a feeling that he wasn't there now. Various greenery sprung up all over the hillside, surrounding the old city and quickly replacing any parts that were demolished to reuse for a new town; a utopia. Even inside the concrete mass, dandelions impatiently pushed through the sidewalks, giving hope to anybody forced to take the dismal walk through the otherwise lifeless metropolis.

But more important to him was she, amazing him every single day more than it would if a rose had burst through that concrete. She seemed to embody freedom, randomly looping about the sky whimsically yet with such skill and grace, always holding an expression that would be called a smile if she had a mouth. Indeed, her eyes always showed that happy expression, and he was amazed the most by that, not realizing that it was because he was there to watch her.

Every morning he would roll out of his truck merrily to charge, the sun shining down to greet him directly instead of hiding behind the cloudy skies that were nothing but memory unless it rained, and even the rain was an amazing sight. Still, it was all a backdrop when she followed him out, making herself known by the spark passing through him that sang 'good morning' in a way that made his favorite songs on his recorder sound like fingernails to a chalkboard in comparison.

His eyes would lift with enthusiasm.

It was forever Sunday.


	43. 2015

**2015**

All through WALL-E's work day, he would see nothing that went against the deep brown tint of his binocular lenses. Pure dismalness. Nothing would even move without his forcing it to. Save Hal, who many would later speculate was the reason he hadn't gone crazy after so long. They were wrong, though. Truthfully, he just never really noticed. He didn't know much else aside from the dull sky and mounds of trash.

Still, he'd get home every day, he'd see his collection of strange objects, and he'd start to feel. Something inside of him would emerge that made him think beyond the trash and the dull sky. When he tried to probe it, however, it felt incomplete. Eventually, he started to feel incomplete too. A fragment of whatever this was and whatever he was.

But... where was the rest?


	44. WALL E

**WALL-E**

First they tried tilting their heads sideways.

Then they tried looking at him upside down.

Then they simply stared for a bit and hoped he'd change like one of those optical illusions the Captain had found a book of.

It didn't work. The EVE units really didn't get where their sister One was coming from when she'd gushed to them about this creature. More specifically, she'd said that she thought he was _attractive_. Now, none of the units disliked WALL-E, all of them knowing the story behind him, but he was dented. And covered in dirt. And _short._ And- Oh crud, EVE was coming. The group zoomed behind one of the nearby building. WALL-E, who'd been too caught up in the watering of a baby tree he seemed to care a lot for, finally heard some of the noise and turned too late to see his observers. He did, however, spot EVE coming up to him.

The sisters blinked.

WALL-E's entire disposition changed in an instant. He hadn't been miserable before or anything, but you could have thought so in comparison. His expression lit up with joy and enthusiasm. A quick look over to EVE and the sisters found a similar change. The two just didn't even really do anything. They just stayed there... talking? There was little if any exchange of the robotic language, but somehow they still seemed to be having some riveting conversation.

The sisters, however, did need robotic for a conversation of their own.

_"Is it possible that One could have a critical error?"_

_"Should we peruse One about said error for her own good?"_

_"Should we force One to give us a full system report?"_

_"Isn't One by far the most skilled of us with an ion cannon?"_

There was a long pause after the last one.

_"...Don't we have some organic life to tend to?"_

_"Oh, yes, I have a patch of dandelions that need constant attention!"_

_"I recall the captain assigning me to a very important thorn bush!"_

_"I...Uh...I have other things to do as well!"_

EVE and WALL-E looked to one of the nearby buildings in confusion when they heard what sounded like several robots fleeing. Seeing nothing, they shrugged and continued their conversation.


	45. Answer

**Answer**

She floated atop his home, completely still and quiet aside from a flashing light and beep to match. She didn't move an inch as he rolled away, deflated.

And he slowly went back to his work, the same work he'd been so proud to show her a few days ago, staring at each square and remembering that EVE was more like a circle. Staking each cube haphazardly, despite the foundation being the most important part. He knew this, but he still acted as if the someday looming tower could fall on top of him for all he cared. Stopping, he pulled a lighters, no, _the_ lighter, simply staring. The flame danced for him like it had for her. The connection it brought was horribly nostalgic.

For the first time, WALL-E questioned why he was on that brown, dusty planet.

The ground shook, and his pathetic cube fell to the ground. The familiar sound of rockets boomed, and his eyes shot upward to catch the sight of the worst possible thing he could have.

No.

There was no answer to the question of why he was here. Not without her.


	46. Error

**Error**

_To help save Operation Cleanup funds, WALL-E units must try and not let themselves be deactivated or destroyed._

And then there was a list of ways to not get killed. Run away from falling trash buildings, don't try and swim, don't set self on fire, etc etc. Taking parts from an off-line brother unit, however, was not on the list. But, somehow, he'd known it was an option. Had WALL-E's spirit been more developed, he may have realized that he'd had an idea.

He also didn't realized that he had procrastinated on this for a long time, now in a sub-par condition to what BnL guidelines said to try and keep a unit at. But eventually, one of his tread gears started to slow, and it became do or die. He began to remove a gear from the dead unit he stood before. With few other units around at the time, the sound of the part snapping off echoed through the streets.

He froze up. Another unit saw and looked to him, noting to report another deactivated unit at the base truck. He left before he could see the unit more again, perfectly functional, wondering why it had froze in the first place, and noticing a strange sensation in his frame.

He began the repairs. He had to keep going. To keep compacting trash. To keep doing his directive. There had been a small malfunction. An error.

An emotion.

Several emotions.

Sadness. Grief. Guilt. Heartsickness.

But he didn't know what that was yet, so he simply rolled away.


	47. Start

**Start**

Sky.

It was a word she'd only heard once or twice, spat out as a flat description by a simulator. She could barely define it, or understand it, as her directive was in the soil that rested beneath her. Suddenly, it was real, and it was before her eyes. Where did it begin? Was she in it simply because she wasn't in the ground, or was there a gap between the two? She reached a hand up higher. It felt no different. If she went higher, would it? Was there a barrier at some hight for her to crash into by mistake? Was the brown simply a backdrop and she'd rip through it to find space?

WALL-E was not the only one first defined by curiosity.


	48. Sunshine

**Sunshine**

None of the humans cared much for sunshine. Not that the Axiom Colony had anything _against_ it, but after spending their whole lives under a simulated sun, such weather just was not interesting to them.

WALL-E cared deeply for sunshine. Before the humans had arrived and started helping him clean the area, it was a rare event to be looked over by mostly blue skies.

As each day passed, there would sometimes be sun, and sometimes rain, and sometimes hail, and sometimes the hodgepodge for McCrea to define.

At the end of every day, everybody would agree:

Earth was beautiful.


	49. Telling EVE

Next chapter is going to be the last for Outside of Yonkers.

In the almost 2 years (scary, huh?) since WALL-E came out, I'd like to think my writing has improved a bit. Between how big this collection is getting, and that I look back on some of my first one shots and wonder if I really want those as my first impression on readers, I think it's about time to let this collection retire and get a clean slate in here.

I'm not sure what I'm going to call my next one shot collection yet, but I'll try and know by the time I post one shot number 50 so anybody reading these will know what to look out for. I have some ideas.

(TL;DR Every time somebody replies to chapter 50 asking me where the next chapter is, WALL-E runs over Hal. Please think of the adorable roach!)

**Telling EVE**

She wants to know everything, and he wants to share with her. But trying to tell his story freezes him solid in a jumble, of time and curiosity and feeling when he wasn't supposed to feel and grief, that would challenge even the liberty of full, eloquent sentences.

He's facing her, the light of the truck's open door not quite reaching him, conscious of the space between them as his hands merge.

But.

Only seconds go by before she mimics his gesture.

And only seconds more before she fervently reaches out to him and laces their fingers together.

She understands.


	50. One

A/N: And thus, with this last ficlet, we officially reach the end of _Outside of Yonkers_. Thank you to everybody for supporting this collection! I'm glad so many people enjoyed these. As of the time I'm writing this, OOY has _135 reviews!_ Wow!

I said I'd try to have the title of my next ficlet collection ready for this, and I've got it; the title is "_Life In #FFC0CB"_. (Get it? (crickets chirp) ...never mind, geek joke.) Should be up really soon.

Anyways, here's the final and 50th ficlet of this collection! Thanks again for reading! :D

* * *

**One**

At last, all the barriers are broken, by something as impulsive as flying through space together. They swirl, dip, speed up, slow down, whatever, but always with one mind. Somehow, she knows to slow down because his makeshift rocket isn't as fast as her hover system. Somehow, he knows that he can go as fast as he wants because she wouldn't let him get hurt. And he's become more aware of the words he doesn't know because she can say them so eloquently, but he finds himself unable to care if they can work together so well without saying anything.

He already knows they're on the same page.


End file.
